The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for mounting components, which picks up components supplied from a component supply section using suction nozzles attached to a mounting head and mounts the components on a printed circuit board.
Generally, a component mounting apparatus is configured in such a way as to carry a printed circuit board to be mounted using a transfer belt, position the printed circuit board by moving a component mounting section in X and Y directions, pick up components supplied by a component supply section using suction nozzles attached to a mounting head and mount the components on the positioned printed circuit board.
When components are mounted on a printed circuit board, in order to shorten a total time of mounting the components, the electronic components to be mounted are separated into a plurality of component groups according to the sizes, weights and mounting positions of the components supplied, and their mounting order is optimized before the components are mounted. This is because when the components to be mounted are suction-held by suction nozzles and moved to their mounting positions on the printed circuit board, the components may fall off from the suction nozzles if they are big or heavy.
By the way, with reduction in size and weight of electronic devices such as cellular phones and small digital video cameras in recent years, it is necessary to mount components one side of which is smaller than 1 mm with narrow inter-component distances of 0.3 mm or even narrower 0.1 mm, for example.
However, as shown in FIG. 13a, in the case where components are mounted with a narrow inter-component interval xcex1, a component 1a which is already mounted, and a suction nozzle 5 or a component 1b held by the suction nozzle 5 interfere with each other in the vicinity of an arrow C, causing a problem of rendering the mounting of the component 1b defective.
As a solution to such a problem, a method of mounting components using suction nozzles 5 having a smaller diameter as shown in FIG. 13b is proposed. However, such narrow suction nozzles 5 have a problem of failing to keep the nozzle strength and easily getting damaged. Therefore, the diameter of the suction nozzles 5 is required to be at least 4 mm from the standpoint of strength.
The present invention has been implemented to solve the above described problems and it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and an apparatus for mounting components, capable of mounting even such components as with a narrow inter-component space without producing any interference between the components already mounted and the suction nozzles or components being suction-held by the suction nozzles.
The component mounting apparatus of the present invention is an apparatus that can pick up components supplied from a component supply section by suction nozzles attached to a mounting head and mount the components on a printed circuit board in ascending order of height based on information on the components to be mounted, thus avoiding interference between components or between components and the nozzles. Therefore, in order to mount components in ascending order of height based on information on the components to be mounted, the present invention provides a control section that moves at least one of the positions of the suction nozzle, the mounting head and the printed circuit board.
Furthermore, the component mounting apparatus of the present invention includes a component supply section, a mounting head having suction nozzles, a component mounting section that positions and fixes the printed circuit board, a control section that controls the suction head, the mounting head and the component mounting section, and a data section having component information, wherein the positions of the suction nozzles, the mounting head and the printed circuit board are driven and controlled such that the components are mounted in ascending order of height based on height data of the components supplied from the data section.
Furthermore, the component mounting apparatus of the present invention includes a component supply section, a mounting head having suction nozzles, a component mounting section that positions and fixes the printed circuit board, a control section that controls vertical movements of the suction head and horizontal movements of the mounting head and a data section having component information, and drives and controls the movements of the suction nozzles and the mounting head such that the components are mounted in ascending order of height based on height data of the components supplied from the data section.
The component mounting method of the present invention is a method that, when picking up components supplied from a component supply section by suction nozzles attached to a mounting head and mounting the components on a printed circuit board, drives the positions of the suction nozzle, the suction head and the printed circuit board so that the components are mounted in ascending order of height based on preset internal information on the components to be mounted.
According to the present invention, it is possible to mount components on the printed circuit board without problems because even when components are mounted with only a narrow distance between components, interference in terms of height between the already mounted lower components and the suction nozzles or higher components being suction-held by the suction nozzles is avoided.
In the case where a distance between components to be mounted varies, the component mounting method of the present invention separates components into a plurality of groups in such a way that components with a narrower inter-component distance than a predetermined value are put into a same group and components of the same group are mounted in ascending order of height.
This configuration not only prevents interference between components but also prevents components from being mounted in such an order that mounting of a component of a first group is immediately followed by mounting of another component of a second group whose inter-component distance is longer than that of the first group, thus making it possible to prevent the moving distance of the components to be mounted from becoming too long and finish the overall mounting in a relatively short time.
Furthermore, in case where the distance between neighboring components is narrow, the component mounting method of the present invention checks, according to a mounting plan, whether there are any low components to be mounted first and if there are such components, checks whether such components have actually been mounted or not, and then mounts the components on the printed circuit board.
Even if mounting fails, this configuration allows components to be mounted without producing any interference between the already mounted components and the suction nozzles or components being suction-held by the suction nozzles.